Features coming soon to GalCiv

[LDiCesare]

Pyrkaige, remember they budgetted one year worth of development after game release. So technically they are getting paid. And they hope that this continued support will drive more people to the game. I know I would make lots of advertising for the game if it could be available at retail in France. Right now telling people to buy something over the net won't cut it.

[civer3]

Originally posted by Pyrkaige
A lot of that all depends on how you play. GalCiv certainly isn't Civ3; you can't just build every social project in every planet and expect to be able to easily support it. On my current gigantic Masochistic game, though, I've only had 3 trade routes for the entire game, and haven't traded techs or anything else since the start of the game. My economy in this game is not great, and it would be better if I'd gotten more money from outside sources, but I'm still doing fine. You just have to choose what you build, and be careful to keep your people happy (and therefor productive.) Check out the strategies forum here and on galciv.com for more info on doing that, if you're having problems.

That's the understatement of the year. I had one planet where nothing was built - Class: 19. Revenue: 29 bc. Spending: 0 bc. The revenue was still 29 bc. I built 1 fusion power plant and the spending rose to 79 bc. That's totally absurd. 1 social improvement and my income is already in the negative on a class 19 planet! What the hell is going on, here? Can anyone explain this?

[Pyrkaige]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Pyrkaige, remember they budgetted one year worth of development after game release. So technically they are getting paid. And they hope that this continued support will drive more people to the game. I know I would make lots of advertising for the game if it could be available at retail in France. Right now telling people to buy something over the net won't cut it.

Budgetting money from previous successful projects is one thing; making enough money off of your current project is quite another. Basically, Stardock is taking something of a risk by putting up their money to have a substantial development team continue to release these large updates, without making money directly off of them. No doubt the hope is that GalCiv will continue to sell well and stay on the shelves longer than it would have otherwise, thereby recuperating the extra cost. (And if that does indeed work, my hope is that other game developers will decide it is a policy worth imitating; but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.) Brad Wardell has written that GalCiv will probably make 10% of Stardock's revenue this year, so they have a bit more leeway than your average developer when it comes to taking risks like that. As someone who really enjoys playing games that are supported, I hope it's a risk that pays off.

As far as distribution, it is really too bad that there is such difficulty getting the game in places like France. The current industry for media of all types (music, software, videos/dvd, etc.) has rather restrictive distribution rules and methods. It sure would be nice if some place like Amazon.com could take forms of payment with Euros and other currency and ship anywhere in the world. A global economy, indeed...

Originally posted by civer3
That's the understatement of the year. I had one planet where nothing was built - Class: 19. Revenue: 29 bc. Spending: 0 bc. The revenue was still 29 bc. I built 1 fusion power plant and the spending rose to 79 bc. That's totally absurd. 1 social improvement and my income is already in the negative on a class 19 planet! What the hell is going on, here? Can anyone explain this?

The short answer is, read some of the strategy forum to get a feel for why things cost what they do. The longer answer is that a fusion power plant boosts your social and military production significantly, and (most) production on a planet costs money: the more you produce per turn, the more it costs. That jump does seem rather high; I would guess that you probably raised one of the main production slider bars in the meantime, as well. Balancing out what you want and what you can pay for is half the fun of the game... or life, for that matter.

[Pyrkaige]

1.04 BETA

In a futile attempt to keep this thread on topic, here's the info that's been posted so far on the beta release of 1.04. Since it is a beta, only users who are subscribed to Drengin.net can access it. No word yet on exactly when this will be released as a non-beta version, but since E3 is next week and no releases are scheduled out during that time... it could be a week or more.

1.04 Beta 1: May 9
New Features:
+ More Stars and Planets in the galaxy
+ All AI players more intelligent in tactical combat
+ Some AI players are more concerned with relationship building (having a strong military not quite as important)
+ Military Power calculated to take defensive ships more into account
+ AI more intelligent in dealing with tribute demands from other AI players
+ Dead Cheese: Can no longer blockade stars with ships (they'll pop up beyond your blockade).
+ pop up dialog for when trying to select a military project when all orbit slots are full.
+ AI Players manage money better
+ Lots of misc. game tweaks
+ Scoring changed to provide slightly higher scores in general.

Tweaks / Fixes:
- Crash bug from NULL tech issue fixed
- Crash bug (lockup) due to unfinished battle animation hopefully fixed
- fixed some spelling errors/typos
- alliance sumamry fixed
- new home colony is assigned when ship is traded
- First colony ship having infinite range fixed
- AI ships no longer show range on minimap unless debug version
- when constructors are planted, their directives are canceled now
- checked in fix for events coming up for defected planets
- home stars get re-assigned when ships are traded
- AI ship range will not show up on minimap in release versions
- if a constructor is on sector sweep, etc, it cancels all actions when turned into starbase
- fixed it so that you can't purchase multiple social and military projects (but they don't get lost)
- fixed starship move calculations
-f ixed crash in extended ship data window
- fixed crash if save game has bad colony ID

[LDiCesare]

I don't get what they mean about popping to avoid the blockade? Any idea?

[Pyrkaige]

I haven't seen it in action myself, but I assume this refers to when players entirely surround an enemy planet with ships to keep the ships inside from coming out. With this patch, the ships inside will just start outside of the blockade, one extra space away from the planet, if they can't start right next to the planet.

[bonscott]

A blockade can also be used to block a resource or star until you get your units there. Most likely this means that the AI can "pop" around the players cheese.

[Pyrkaige]

Expansion Pack Info

There's a page up with details on the coming free expansion pack, as well as 4 screenshots from it.

The new expansion pack will include:

Integrated Technology Navigator (it makes the tech tree much easier to understand)
Whole slew of new technologies
New minor race: The Arnor
New anomalies
New linked events
Rally points (ship can be set to leave orbit and head to a central point, making it easier to create fleets)
A host of small changes to enhance replayability.
New difficulty level: Nightmare
A ton of new United Planets resolutions
New game ending: Aliens evolve beyond mortality
New graphics on the main screen for stars (make the graphics look less "Flat")

Looking at the screenshots on there, a few other bits of info are noticeable:

* A way to set ships as being Obsolete in the Governor section, so they don't show up on the Military Production list. Hopefully this extends to Social Projects as well, but that wasn't shown.
* The updated star system graphics are definitely easier on the eyes, as well as the shown new (or improved) anomaly.
* The last picture lists the Death Knight ship, (a new ship from an evil-only tech, I believe) showing it with 10 HP, 25 AT, 14 DE, and 2 move. Of course that all could change before the expansion pack actually comes out, I suppose.

The other changes should be interesting as well, both with the ability for aliens to win via tech, and the new difficulty level. Between that and the improvements in AI tactics, it should keep the game challenging for a while.

[Pyrkaige]

1.04 Beta 2

Info from the latest beta is out. As with all betas, you have to be subscribed to Drengin.net to have access to this. The public version "should be out next week."

1.04 Beta 2: May 20
Changes:
-fixed major race logo for minor race error
-destroy star now re-assigns home colony
-fixed volume not saving bug
-mousewheel support for sbupgradewin
-Fixed Cancel Ship destinations to check for star targets as well as ship targets
-fixed model typos in improvements
-clear tech completed queue when loading/starting new game
-fixed crash in upwindow
-basic rally point code
-rally point hit detection
-rally point names on map
-rally point destination pointers in colony and starship
-fixed FindShip going through all ships in a fleet.
-made sure that senate would always have a valid poliitcal party
-fixed break alliance for minor races
-hide espionage/destablize sliders when fp screen in minor races mode
-fixed string not found
-functions to help embargo - embargo not allowed yet because AI needs to check for embargos before assigning trade ships

A nice bunch of fixes there, and work on... rally points!

[Pyrkaige]

1.04.59 is coming

Per Brad Wardell, info on 1.04.59:

by Avatar Frogboy - 5/28/2003 11:03:37 PM


There will be another update on SDCentral to GalCiv tomorrow.

Going to make a few tweaks and fix the terror star explosion thing. BTW< the reason why that code changed is that we put in a really cool new big explosion when you destroy a planet. Unfortunately, something didn'tw ork quite right on it (someone forgot to check something in). But the explosion is like the Star Wars planet destroyed explosion a bit.

Trade goods will be easier to trade except on masochistic level where they'll still be tough.

I also want to put some effort into the AI's diplomatic bearings. We want to make it so that you can effectively bribe your way to staying peaceful with other civilizations.

Though if you're good and your opponents are evil, well, not much you can do about that. (or if you're evil and your opponents are good).

Sounds like some interesting changes, and definitely a good tweak on the trade goods; it'll be nice to have them actually useful for trade again, in the not-quite-insanely-hard difficulty levels.